Real-Life "Murder, She Wrote"

Homemaker Susan Galbreath, of Mayfield, Ky., went from gawker to crime fighter the moment she saw 18-year-old Jessica Currin's burned body lying behind a local middle school on August 1, 2000.

"I knew that (the murder) had grabbed me," Galbreath told CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann. "I knew it because I could not stop thinking about her."

Strassmann reported from Kentucky on The Early Show Tuesday with part one of Galbreath's story of her determined search for Currin's killer.

Currin, the daughter of the local fire captain and a single mother was walking alongside a Mayfield road that August day when a car picked her up. Two days later, she was found dead.

But by 2004, the case went cold. Investigators couldn't prove who killed Currin, despite some locals whispers about a drug party, a rape and the murder. But, Galbreath, still affected by the young woman's death, decided to keep hunting.

Galbreath, Strassmann reported, was married three times and drifting. She had no law enforcement training. She had never even met Jessica Currin. But she couldn't let go.

"Somebody had to do something," Galbreath said. "And if that somebody was me, so be it."

Galbreath, desperate for help, wrote to celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Julia Roberts. But she heard back from only one person -- a reporter in London.

Tom Mangold, a British Broadcasting Corp. investigative journalist, said receiving a cold e-mail from Galbreath was odd. But he teamed up with her in Kentucky anyway, flying there on his own dime to help out with the search.

"She'd go in hard," Mangold said of Galbreath's search methods, "She believed in conspiracy theories, and she was just a bull in a china shop...She did things the cops didn't think of. She did things I didn't think of."

Together the unlikely pair visited the crime scene, scoured police reports, and talked with Currin's family. Their investigation led them to Quincy Cross, who Galbreath became convinced drove the car that picked up Galbreath, and assaulted and strangled her with his belt.

But Galbreath needed a witness. Would she find one? You can find out what happened Wednesday in part two of Strassmann's report on The Early Show.